Cafe Ginger and Local Pour being pushed out of River Oaks Center for high-rise condos

By Jaimy Jones, jjones@chron.com

Published 11:26 am, Monday, March 20, 2017

Loyal customers of two River Oaks restaurants were alarmed when they learned in late February that property owners, Weingarten Realty Investors, are planning a 30-story, high-rise development that will displace three existing businesses in the River Oaks Shopping Center that sits on West Gray and Shepherd, a block from the high-end homes of River Oaks. The shops are at the epicenter of Houston's affluence.

Managers of Cafe Ginger and Local Pour, two popular spots in the center, and are adjacent to each other and say that one TV news channel made a mistake when they reported demolition will begin this year to make way for the mixed-use high-rise, and that has caused some confusion.

"Customers are confused," said John Tang, manager at Cafe Ginger. "We are getting a lot of phone calls, they think we are moving this year."

General Manager at Local Pour, John Maxwell said his team has been fielding the same calls all week.

But the cafe and bar both said they have leases that are in effect until the early part of 2018, and will remain in business at their current locations until demolition begins in April of 2018. Work is scheduled to be completed in 2021.

Tang, of Cafe Ginger, said the owners of the restaurant already have another location in the works, just a few blocks away on West Gray.

Maxwell from Local Pour said they haven't found a new location yet, but they do want to stay in River Oaks.

More luxury, residential high-rises coming to Houston isn't surprising as they've been popping up all over inner-loop neighborhoods in the past 10 years, but for the street that sits on the edge of Montrose, it's not an entirely welcomed development.

The Montrose neighborhood has long been known as the "anti-downtown" downtown neighborhood. In the 1970s and 80s it attracted more gay and lesbian residents than any other part of town, as well as artists and boutique businesses like Magick Cauldron - which calls itself "Houston's Premier Pagan Religious Supplier" - and more recently the slew of modern, award-winning restaurants and bars at Montrose Blvd. and Westheimer Ave.

It doesn't take long as you travel east down West Gray, toward Montrose and away from the ritzy homes of River Oaks, to feel the street transform from the new and monied developments to the older, eclectic small businesses.

On the way is River Oaks Chakra Center, owned by a Ashley Evans. She offers tarot card and psychic readings in a row of older homes that also house Thai Massage and art supply shops. She's been in Houston for six years and said the luxury apartments could change the neighborhood even more.

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"I think it will take away the uniqueness of the area that's already here," she said.

Her shop is only a few blocks away from AMLI River Oaks, a luxury condominium building that showed up in 2013. Less than a mile from AMLI, on Montrose and Hyde Park Boulevard, a sign has gone up on an empty lot for another residential development called City Place.